Is there ever a purpose to use Death if you have access to Grief?

no grief has always been bis.

there are situations where death is superior. but in general both work fine

Bladesin

For Fury Druid
Death beats Grief

For Zealot physical
Death beats Grief

For Frenzy
Grief beats Death

For WW
Grief = Death

For Berserk/Holy Shock/Holy Freeze
Grief beats Death

For Kicksin(non Mosaic)
Stormlash beats both Death and Grief

For Bladesin
Death beats Grief

For Jab/Fend Zon
EBotd WP is best


The truth is that Crushing Blow will always have highest DPS vs against Act Bosses and Ubers and no amount of raw damage will beat Crushing Blow in these situations.

Tl dr Death and Grief are both top tier weapons. In theory, a 450 ED, 2 sockets, 40 ias Legendary Mallet hits much harder than Grief in terms of raw damage.

PS. Range also increases damage indirectly as your swings has higher chance of connecting and decreases downtime where you have to run towards your targets. Death usually has longer range than Grief in PvM.

This post was edited by Tarisus on Jul 2 2024 10:09am

Death is better than grief for a zealot?

Death BA:

355 avg damage
60 avg damage charms
20 avg damage wts
(355+60+20)*2*22=19140

Grief PB
(437.5+60)*1.87*21=19536

The difference between the 2 is about 2.07% which cannot compete with 35% CB.

BA also has 1 range over PB so indirectly, you’ll be swinging a lot more than PB. A good way to test range is start a Paladin and use Spear vs Dagger and see that short range weapon, you’ll be running towards your target and restarting the Zeal sequence over and over. So the main down time is running towards enemies.

Here’s another problem with restarting Zeal, the attack itself always swings at 4/4/4/4/8 BUT if you were to kill a target and nothing is in range, then your Zeal becomes 4/8 or 4/4/8 or 4/4/4/8. Slowing down your attack speed by restarting too much.

Lastly, Vegeance is useful against Physical immunes since having Sunder decreases survival and % PDR is harder to come by and will likely sacrifice damage for it. The +400 on Grief does not work with Vegeance at all but Death 355 damage does work.

PS. Because of native high Dex cost of PB, BA builds will always have at least 100% ED over PB, this includes the 7% mana leech factor.

https://forums.d2jsp.org/topic.php?t=72114346&f=87&o=0

Here’s also a thread where the most knowledgeable GM duelers post saying Death over Grief.

https://forums.d2jsp.org/topic.php?t=32187727

https://forums.d2jsp.org/topic.php?t=72400161&f=87

Here are their guides.

This post was edited by Tarisus on Jul 2 2024 01:08pm

Thanks for the great info!
Im still a baby in d2r, learning away
Ill make sure to use edeath ba for zealots from now on (my little brother is a fan of zealots; hes been using grief pb since forever)

Same FPA?

You mean if they both hit max fpa ? Yes they both can